Portfolio: French PPC ad copy and landing page for PetsPyjamas.com

Britain and France are nations of dog lovers and travel enthusiasts. PetsPyjamas.com is a rising online company who made it its business to send holidaymakers on dog-friendly breaks in Great Britain and Europe. They hand-pick pet-friendly hotels and cottages where dogs are as welcome as their owners! I helped PetsPyjamas craft its first ever French PPC campaign to appeal to French holidaymakers.

Balancing ad copy character limits with the challenges of text expansion

Are you familiar with Google’s strict rules regarding the structure of PPC ads? If not, you will find plenty of information in their guide on PPC text ad requirements.

Here is what you need to know in a nutshell. Ads have to fit on four lines. The first one is reserved for the ad headlines (30 characters maximum per line) followed by the description (80 characters max.) and ends with a link to your site on the fourth and final line. So far, so good!

Not quite as French translators face the challenge of text expansion. When translating copy from one language to another, your text becomes either longer (text expansion) or shorter (text contraction) than the source text.

This proves particularly challenging when it comes to paid search campaigns as you must comply with the character limits imposed by Google. Bear in mind that text expansion averages 15% to 20% for the English-French language pair! Here is how I chose to adapt the French ad copy. I had to drift from the original text in some instances to make it more relevant to a local audience.

English

Length

French

Length

Headline

Dog-friendly Hotels

19

Chiens admis à l’hôtel

22

Description 1

Award-Winning Dog-Friendly Holidays

35

Partir en vacances avec son chien

33

Description 2

100% Dog-Loving, not just Friendly

34

100% passionnés de chiens & voyages

35

Display URL

petspyjamas.com/dog-friendly

28

petspyjamas.com/dog-friendly

28

UK’s #1 for Dog-Friendly

24

Nº1 du séjour avec chien

24

Exclusive Deals & Offers

24

Offres et prix exclusifs

24

Award Winning Team

18

Agents de voyage primés

23

Dogs More Than Accepted

23

Chiens plus que bienvenus

25

French PPC: Localising the landing page of the campaign

If your PPC ad performs well, users will click on it and land your site. The landing page is of the utmost importance. Below you will find a screenshot of the French landing page that I transcreated. Are you a translator or search marketing pro? Then let me know what you think in the comments section.